Early Middle Ages (475-1000)

Charlemagne and the Carolingian State(s) to 843

Political Arrangements in Europe towards the Second Millennium

Summary

From the 850s, Carolingian rule was becoming both fragmented and
weaker. Kings from Charles' line continued to vie with brothers
and rising notables. At the same time, foreign threats to Europe pressed
from the northern, southern, and eastern margins. The first threat
came from the Mediterranean area. From the 810s, the Abbasid Caliphate
centered at Baghdad started to break apart west of Egypt into smaller
emirates led by Abbasid governors. One was the Aghlabid Emirate,
centered in Tunisia. Muslims independent of Baghdad controlled
Spain. In 825, groups from Spain captured Crete, a Byzantine island.
Used from then as a pirate base, Arab Muslims then went on to
attack areas all along the southern Mediterranean coast. In 827,
the Aghlabids began the conquest of Sicily, completed by the 850s.
They proceeded to colonize Sardinia and Corsica, going as far
northwest as the Rhone delta in France. Farther east, Aghlabids
used Sicily as a base to raid up to Rome in 843, as well as Calabria
and Apulia, from which they crossed the Adriatic to harass Dalmatia,
and Cyprus. Muslim bases on the Italian mainland continued until
915, when they were ousted by a Byzantine fleet. By 1000, the
Muslims had lost Crete, yet the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt still
held Sicily, and the Spanish Ummayads held islands in the western
Mediterranean.

The threat from the southeast came in the form of the
Magyars, a pagan people originating north of the Crimea. Pushed
west by Patzinak Turks in the 890s, they came to Hungary, pushing
the Bulgars south. The German King Arnulf asked them to punish
the Czech Kingdom of Moravia to the east of Germany and Burgundy in
892. After destroying it in the 900-910s, they turned to raiding in
Germany, Italy, as well as Burgundy, France, and Provence. Advancing
to Pavia, they wintered in Lombardy in 899, then moving to Carinthia.
Next they hit Saxony (906), Bavaria (907), Thuringia (908) and
Swabia (909). Two years later, Louis the Child died. The last
descendant of Charlemagne from Louis the German, he had been quite
weak. German nobles decided to give allegiance to Conrad of Franconia,
a non-dominant duke. He was not able to stop Hungarian invasions.
From 917-925, they ranged through Basle, Alsace, Burgundy, Saxony,
and Provence. During these same years, Conrad's rule had passed
to Henry the Fowler, Duke of Saxony. He was the first non-Frankish
king of the Germans, and spent the first six years of his rule
in fighting of other dukes. Only Franconia was cooperative, with
the dukes of Swabia, Lotharingia, and Bavaria resenting his pretensions
to untrammeled leadership of eastern Francia.

These civil wars only ended in 924, with new large-scar
Magyar raids. In 937, Magyars raided as far west as Reims in France.
At first, Henry focused on defending only his home duchy of Saxony.
By capturing a Hungarian war leader, he secured a truce for the region.
By 933, he felt strong enough to refuse further payments of tribute
to the Hungarians. When the Hungarians launched a massive punitive
expedition, Henry routed it at Unstrut. In 934 as well, he pushed
Danes away from central German lands. When he died in 936, he was
hailed as 'lord emperor'. Within twenty years, Magyars receded
as a threat to the West. After facing internal revolts similar
to those during his father Henry's time, German King Otto I met
Magyars in battle at Lechfeld in Bavaria in 955, defeating them
so decisively that they never left Hungary again, except to raid lightly
in Byzantium. By 1000 the Magyar Duke Stephen Arpad had begun the
Christianization process under Papal auspices.

By far more destructive and consequential were the Viking
incursions, from the early 800s to the 920s. They affected three
major areas: Britain, the Carolingian lands, and Russia. Britain
was the first region targeted, starting from the 780s. By 785,
monasteries in Lindisfarme (793) and Jarrow were destroyed. Norsemen
then began to raid the Shetland Islands, the Orkneys, and the Faroes, after
which they moved down between the Western Scottish Islands and
Ireland, which became the focus for the next few years. Dublin, Wexford,
and Waterford were hit, as was western Scotland. Around this time
(820s), the south English King of Wessex was increasing his holdings
against the Mercians north of him as well as the Welsh to his west.
Wessex was the chief adversary to the Vikings, who refocused their
energies on England from the 840s. In 866, the 'great army' of
Danish Vikings invaded southeastern England, overrunning East Anglia,
Northumbria, and Mercia by 877. They were stopped only by King
Alfred the Great (r. 871-899) of Wessex, who defeated them at Edington
in 878. By 885, West Saxon power convinced Vikings to make an
agreement, whereby only East Anglia, eastern Mercia, and nearby
counties would remain in Viking hands, called the Danelaw. Alfred
also insisted that Danish Vikings in Britain accept Christianity.
By the 920s, Wessex had taken back most of the Danelaw, by which
time the Vikings had moved west across the water to Ireland again,
establishing the Kingdom of Dublin, which helped them to take York.
This area was annexed by the English in 927, when its king died, but
was subjected to Scottish-Norse attacks in the 930s. By the 940s,
Wessex had established firm control up through York, becoming the
Kingdom of Saxon England. By the 950s, only northern Scotland,
the Earldom of Orkney, remained as a Viking possession, while the
Vikings' places of origin were stabilizing as the Kingdoms of Norway,
Sweden, and Denmark.

In Russia, the Swedish Vikings were known as Varangians, invading
Slavic lands from the Baltic Sea. By the 860s, the Varangians
established three fortified enclaves at Beloozero in the Northeast,
Novgorod in the North-Central areas, and Izborsk below the Gulf
of Finland. By the 880s, they had extended their raids and migrations
south to the Dneiper in the West, with new outposts at Polotsk,
Smolensk, and even Kiev north of the Crimea. In the East, they
focused on the upper Volga, with new settlements on Rostov and
Murom. From there, raids extended at times to Byzantium and Constantinople,
with which they also traded. In the next century, Byzantine Emperors
assembled a personal protective force called the Varangian Guard.
In the tenth century, the Varangians created a unified Russian
principality encompassing the region's Slavs and descending to
the Crimea. Based on the Rurikovitch dynasty at Kiev, by the middle
of the century under Sviatoslav, Varangians had been demographically
swallowed by Slavs. The king led expeditions against the Khazars
(965), Volga Bulgars (966) and the Lower Danube Bulgar Khanate (967),
but was not able to penetrate Byzantine Balkans, and was killed
in a Patzinak ambush (972). At this point, both Roman and Orthodox
Christianity were making inroads among the Russians. Vladimir
I, Prince of Kiev (980-1015), officially accepted the Orthodox
rite through an accord with resurgent Byzantium under Basil II
(r. 976-1025) whereby he also agreed to marry the Emperor's daughter,
establishing lasting cultural ties.

From the 830s-910s, the Norsemen also ravaged Frankish realms.
From 814, small summer raids had affected the coast areas such
as Nourmoutier at the opening of the Loire. From 840, turning
away from Britain for a while, they focused on Europe in earnest,
hitting Nourmoutier, Antwerp, and Utrecht. In 841, a Viking fleet
entered the mouth of the Seine and sacked Rouen. Two years later
they entered the Loire, burned Nantes, moving to plunder the valleys
of the Garonne, even threatening Muslim Lisbon. They then wintered
on Nourmoutier. As they also established winter bases on Thanet
Isle near the Thames, a new phase of occupation-settlement began.
From the Loire base they ravaged the Garonne and the Spanish coast.
Between 845 and 857, Seville, Bordeaux, Tours, Blois, Orleans,
and Poitiers were hit. Beginning it was the sack of Paris with
120 ships. From 859-862 a sustained Viking 'tour' was undertaken.
Sailing from Nourmoutier on the Loire, they plundered their why
down the French and Iberian coasts, hitting Lisbon on the way.
Crossing through Gibraltar, they then raided Morocco, the southern
coast of Spain, the Balearic Islands, and Barcelona. The Norsemen
then spent the winter on the mouth of the Rhone, near Marseilles.
In the next year, they then raided throughout southern France,
as far north as Valence. Turning east, they sacked Pisa and Luna
in Italy, mistaking the latter for Rome. They then returned to
Nourmoutier over the next years, by the same route, ravaging as
they went.

In 872, Loire Vikings took Angers, using it as a base
for further plundering. This allowed them to hit Ghent (879),
Saxony (880), Charlemagne's palace at Aachen (881), Conde (882),
and Amiens (883). In 885, a large Viking flotilla proceeded up
the Seine, offering to spare Paris only if allowed unhindered passage.
The area's duke refused, and a two-year siege commenced. The last
strong Frankish king in the East, Emperor Charles the Fat, was
able to push them off, offering them a ransom as well as unhampered
plundering in Burgundy, his enemy at the time. Viking power began
to wane, as German king Arnulf defeated them at Dyle in the Netherlands
in 891. They could still dominate weaker western France into the 910s.
In 911, Western Frankish king Charles the Simple granted the Viking
leader Rollo lands around the mouth of the Seine, soon enlarged
to include Normandy. The eventual Normans also accepted Christianity
and nominal vassalage to the French King. Defending the region
from other Vikings, they would rise through the century from counts
to dukes, and become increasingly French. By the 930s, then, the
Viking menace ebbed from Europe.

Commentary

The 840s to the 920s witnessed the last wave of Barbarian
influx into Western and Central Europe. Each was more destructive.
When the first wave of Goth, Vandal, and Alan incursions passed though
Europe's heartland and continued on, they may have destroyed the
Roman state, but not necessarily its society, civilization, or
culture. The shorter migrations of Franks, Alamanni, and Saxons
just west of the Rhine, and then into Gaul, went much farther to
wreck Roman civil and political organization, and began to cut
off France from the Mediterranean coast in cultural and economic
matters. The third wave, consisting of Lombards, Avars, Bulgars,
and Slavs, ushered in the Dark Ages for the West and Byzantium,
demolishing Antiquity's commercial, and ecological bases, plundering
more thoroughly than ever before, having no interest in Roman ideas,
and settling the land intensely. No longer continuing migrations,
the second and third wave were plundering population transplants.

In the eighth century, Europe witnessed a new invasion
in the west, that of Arab and Berber Muslims into Spain. A migration
of sorts, it was less destructive. Still, carrying a developing
culture and universalist religious message, the Islamic arrival
markedly altered Iberia's civilization. Perhaps it was a fourth
wave of migrations, but of a decidedly civilized nature. The real
fourth wave of Barbarian incursions into Europe occurred with the
Viking and Magyar invasions that hastened Carolingian decline.
They cut short the flowering of a first medieval European civilization,
and were punishing to its culture in a way unlike the previous
200 years. And though the Varangians and Normans would become
a part of European society, the majority of Vikings would return
to the North after their conversion to Christianity. While some
have called the Vikings 'traders not raiders', this seems to exaggerate
their commercial tendency directed mostly at the Black Sea and
Constantinople region. More probably Vikings themselves would
have put it 'mostly raid and a little trade'.

The military stresses on Europe from all sides from 830-950 caused
conditions guardedly described as political anarchy. It elicited
a further extension of a socio-political process in train already: feudalism.
Feudalism did not reach its maturity until the thirteenth century,
so only its main lines will be considered here.

In most basic terms, feudalism denotes a socio-political
structure based on the granting of land by a superior political
power to an inferior one in return for loyalty and services primarily
of a military nature. It becomes systemic when the entirety of
society is structured around variegated levels of feudal relations.
There are two components. The first is a relationship of sworn
loyalty to the person of the superior--in this case, the lord.
The personal nature of loyalty, as opposed to
attachment to an institution, is Germanic in background, quite
similar to the comitatus stretching back to the third
century. The second component is the tenure on land conditioned
on provision of specified services. This has its precedent in late
Roman land law.

Since the earliest post-Roman times, counts, generals,
and kings had given out lands or revenues in return for some necessary
service. Often this was based on a personal loyalty that was sundered at
death. A recognizable process of evolution set in from the mid-600s.
Provisionally, it consisted of four phases. As later Merovingians
weakened, local notables began arrogating fiscal and political prerogatives
to themselves. Integral to this process was the emergence of Mayors
of the Palace based on local wealth and power. Pepin of Heristal
and his descendents typify this. They grew in power in part by
cultivating relationships of mutual dependence with other lesser
nobility in order to undermine challengers and enfeeble kings.
In the process, they alienated lands from the king, and on occasion,
from the church that was not in a position to oppose them.

The second phase was under Charles Martel, who in both
civil conflict and wars along the southwestern and northeastern
frontiers, began to use armored cavalry. This method of warfare
was much more expensive than infantry combat, and relatively few
warriors could afford to sustain themselves. Charles began to
assemble his own retinues. He would personally support a portion
of them by providing them shelter, food, and arms in his own residence.
By far the larger group was granted lands to sustain them, called
benefices, or fiefs (feodum). In both cases,
these warriors became vassi dominici-- vassals
of the lord based upon an oath of absolute fidelity. This oath
made sense when there was no impersonal law common to all in the
realm. Such oaths of vassalage most likely bonded lesser nobles
to Charles and Pepin III as well. Consultation and consensus with
these nobles was integral to the Carolingian rise, until Charlemagne
was supreme.

The third phase was attendant upon Carolingian decline
and foreign invasions from the 830s. In the political anarchy
of civil wars and Viking-Magyar marauding, only armed force through mounted
cavalry provided any law or protection. The central army that
existed was often ineffective against Vikings. By the time the royal
host had assembled, the enemy raid had already passed through,
plundering all in its wake. Two dynamics played in to this phase.
First, later Carolingians needed armed allies, both to fend off
foreigners, as well as to provide militaries to combat their relatives.
Thus, kings had to offer something in return for their services:
land grants. Second, lesser folk--weaker counts, aspiring warriors,
parish priests, and the remaining free peasants--were willing to
submit to more powerful men, in hopes of protection or advancement
in precarious times. All this contributed to a disbursement of
political, legal, and coercive power. Put differently, any authority
with a hope of effectiveness had to be local. Thus, varying hierarchies
of lord-vassal relations emerged. The feudal process developed
soonest and most thoroughly in the regions far from traditional
Frankish lands, such as the Western Kingdom, Lorraine, and even
Franconia. In these places kings would assign lands to powerful
local dukes, who in turn would need to parcel out portions of their
fiefs to intermediate warriors in vertical chains through society.
At first, land grants were temporary, then given for a lifetime.
By the tenth century, in most cases they had become hereditary,
based on primogeniture. As it developed, the relationship between
lord and vassal took on a more rigid form. If accepted by a lord,
the prospective vassal would perform a ceremony whereby he swore
fealty to his patron, establishing a personal relationship. Something
called homage was associated with this. A term whose difference
from fealty is still unclear, homage is thought to involve the
acceptance of a fief in return for services, though homage was also
performed by members of household retinue receiving no land. In
the usual case where a lord was a vassal to a higher figure, the
lesser lord's vassals were a boon to the superior leader. As mentioned, services in
return for land was key. The nature of them varied from region
to region. In every case military service was a component. A
vassal was required to serve as much as necessary in defensive
efforts for his lord. As regards offensive enterprises, there was
usually an upper limit per year, often the forty days corresponding
to the spring-summer campaigning season. Often, an added duty
was to serve in the garrison of a lord's estate. Beyond this,
attendance at the lord's court was necessary, depending upon the
position of a vassal in the feudal hierarchy. While it allowed
the lord to keep tabs on vassals, and provided him with a judicial
corps, it also provided the vassal with an opportunity to have his
own views heard, regarding potential campaigns, alliances, or even
marriages. Any major project of a lord would require such consultation
in order to be practicable. Finally, various ad hoc dues such
as hospitality when the lord visited, provision of extraordinary
resources at times, and the payment of relief, or a key-money of
sorts, when an heir succeeded to a fief, were part of feudal society.

It is not clear that this was the best political arrangement
for early-high medieval Europe. It legitimized the enduring personalism
of legal relationships, as well as rampant inequality. Also, it was
cultivated for the sole purpose of organizing warfare as a means
of not just survival, but livelihood and usurpation of kingly authority.
Still, it did provide a modicum of local security when far-off
kings or senior lords could not. A local vassal was reasonably likely
to care for his farms and his villages, as they provided him with
sustenance. Thus, a total collapse of society was prevented, and
the nuclei of later states were supported in feudal beginnings.
Whereas the fourth phase of feudalism was its generalization to
the point of no effective kingly power, or his demotion to a first
among equals, the emergence of polities on feudal bases would be
a fifth stage of feudalism. In the luckiest of cases, the proliferation
of medium- and high-level lords allowed more opportunities for
elite patronage of culture and arts.